Cherokee term for 'china clay'

A.W. Tüting ti at fa-kuan.muc.de
Fri Jul 14 06:20:56 UTC 2006


Bob,
this is what I've come up with:

kaolin
"china clay," 1727, from Fr. kaolin (1712), from Chinese Kao-ling, 
transliteration of the name of a mountain in Jiangxi, China (near which 
it was originally dug up), from Chinese gao "high" + ling "mountain, 
hill."

I think that the 'French' term kaolin came back into Chinese what is 
gao1 ling3 (tu3) in Pinyin romanization (lit.: earth from Gaoling 
mountain); gao ling is "high mountain range"
UTF-8 高嶺(土); another term for kaolin is tao2tu3 陶土  (lit.: pottery 
earth). Another term is bai2 tu3 白土 (lit.: white earth).

Alfred

Am 13.07.2006 um 17:03 schrieb Rankin, Robert L:

> I had to take a class in "Georgia History" when I was in Junior High 
> School and learned that kaolin (white clay) was one of Georgia's 
> natural resources.  The teacher pronounced in [ke:olin] -- three 
> syllables.  I never thought more about it until this thread.  I guess 
> it's pretty clear that kaolin is a Chinese loanword in English.  I 
> have missed part of this discussion -- what does kao lin mean in 
> Chinese?  I assume it's pronounced [kaw lin] plus tones.

> Bob
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